Extra

burn-in: One of the quality
tests performed on electrical circuits in computer equipment during
the manufacturing process. During the burn-in process, the
temperature may be varied from below freezing to above 100 degrees
Fahrenheit to test the circuits in a computer or its components
while they are operating. In some tests, the input voltage may be
varied.

latency: Delay between when
a computer receives an address to which data is to be transferred
and when it actually starts the transfer.

message-passing: Term
related to distributed multiprocessing operating systems for
communications between tasks.

MIMD: Multiple instructions,
Multiple Data machine. Massive parallel processing architecture in
which the processors work as a team, solving large problems by
dividing them up. Each processor has its own memory. The number of
processors in a MIMD system varies from 16 to 2000. Each processor
manipulates different data independently.

parallel programming:
Writing a program so that separate elements of it are executed at
the same time. Concurrent C/C++ is an example of a language written
for parallel programming.

PCI bus: Peripheral
component interconnect bus. The local bus standard developed by
Intel Corp. which allows the central processing unit to transfer
data to 16 devices at 33MHz along a 32- or 64-bit pathway. This
version is a separate bus isolated from the CPU.

RS-232: Standard for cable
and 25-pin electrical connection between computers and peripheral
devices using a serial binary data interchange. Used for slower
communications, requiring speeds of no greater that 20Kbps, with a
standard limit of 75 feet.

SIMD: Single instruction,
multiple data. Massively parallel processing architecture with
large numbers of processors working on a single problem but sharing
distributed memory. SIMD computers have between 1000 and 16,400
processors.

virtual: Anything that
appears to be other than what it actually is, e.g., virtual memory
is the apparent expansion of the computer's memory by using disk
space to store programs and data.

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